Under Alexei Mikhailovich, a rebellion broke out in Russia in 1667, which was later called the uprising of Stepan Razin. This rebellion is also called the peasant war.
The official version is as follows. The peasants, together with the Cossacks, rebelled against the landlords and the tsar. The revolt lasted four long years, covering large territories of imperial Russia, but by the efforts of the authorities it was nevertheless suppressed.
What do we know today about Stepan Timofeevich Razin?
By birth Stepan Razin, like Emelyan Pugachev, was from the Zimoveyskaya stanitsa. The original documents of the Razin people who lost this war have hardly survived. The officialdom believes that only 6-7 of them survived. But historians themselves say that of these 6-7 documents, only one can be considered the original, although it is extremely dubious and looks more like a draft. And the fact that this document was not drawn up by Razin himself, but by his associates, who were far from his main headquarters on the Volga, no one doubts.
Russian historian V. I. Buganov, in his work "Razin and Razintsy", referring to a multivolume collection of academic documents on the Razin uprising, wrote that the overwhelming majority of these documents came from the government camp of the Romanovs. Hence the suppression of facts, and tendentiousness in their coverage, and even outright lies.
What did the rebels demand from the rulers?
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It is known that the Razins fought under the banner of the great war for the Russian sovereign against the traitors - the Moscow boyars. Historians explain this seemingly strange slogan by the fact that the Razins were very naive and wanted to protect poor Alexei Mikhailovich from their own bad boyars in Moscow. But one of the Razin letters contains the following text:
In the current year, October 179, on the 15th day, according to the decree of the great sovereign and according to his letter, the great sovereign, we, the great army of the Don from the Don, went out to him, the great sovereign, into the service, so that we, this from them, the traitor boyars would not completely perish.
Note that the name of Alexei Mikhailovich is not mentioned in the letter. Historians consider this detail to be insignificant. In their other letters, the Razins express an obviously dismissive attitude towards the Romanov authorities, and they call all their actions and documents thieves', i.e. illegal. There is a clear contradiction here. For some reason, the rebels do not recognize Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov as the legitimate ruler of Russia, but they go to fight for him.
Who was Stepan Razin?
Suppose that Stepan Razin was not just a Cossack chieftain, but a commander of the sovereign, but not Alexei Romanov. How can this be? After the great turmoil and the coming to power of the Romanovs in Muscovy, the southern part of Russia with its capital in Astrakhan did not swear allegiance to the invaders. The governor of the Astrakhan king was Stepan Timofeevich. Presumably, the Astrakhan ruler was from the clan of the princes of Cherkassk. It is impossible to name him today due to the total distortion of history by order of the Romanovs, but one can assume …
The Cherkasskys were from the old Russian-Arda families and were descendants of the Egyptian sultans. This is reflected in the coat of arms of the Cherkasy family. It is known that from 1380 to 1717 the Circassian sultans ruled in Egypt. Today, historical Cherkassia is mistakenly placed in the North Caucasus, adding that at the end of the 16th century. this name disappears from the historical arena. But it is well known that in Russia up to the XVIII century. the word "Cherkasy" called the Cossacks. As for the presence of one of the Cherkassk princes in the Razin troops, this can be confirmed. Even in the Romanov version, history brings us information that in the army of Razin there was a certain Cherkashenin Alexei Grigorievich, one of the Cossack atamans, named brother of Stepan Razin. Perhaps we are talking about Prince Grigory Suncheleevich Cherkassky, who served as a governor in Astrakhan before the start of the Razin war,but after the victory of the Romanovs he was killed in his estate in 1672.
Turning point in the war
The victory in this war was not easy for the Romanovs. As is known from the conciliar regulations of 1649, Tsar Alexei Romanov established an indefinite attachment of the peasants to the land, i.e. approved serfdom in Russia. Razin's campaigns on the Volga were accompanied by widespread uprisings of serfs. Following the Russian peasants, huge groups of other Volga peoples revolted: the Chuvashes, the Mari, and others. But apart from the common population, the Romanov troops also went over to Razin's side! German newspapers of that time wrote: "So many strong troops got to Razin that Alexei Mikhailovich was so frightened that he did not want to send his troops against him anymore."
The Romanovs managed to turn the tide of the war with great difficulty. It is known that the Romanovs had to equip the troops with Western European mercenaries, because after frequent cases of going over to Razin's side, the Romanovs considered Tatar and Russian troops to be unreliable. The Razin people, on the other hand, had a bad attitude towards foreigners, to put it mildly. Cossacks killed captive foreign mercenaries.
All these large-scale events are presented by historians only as the suppression of a peasant revolt. This version was actively introduced by the Romanovs immediately after their victory. Special certificates were made, the so-called. "Sovereign models", in which the official version of the Razin uprising was presented. It was ordered to read the letter in the field at the clerk hut more than once. But if the four-year confrontation was just an uprising of the mob, it means that most of the country rebelled against the Romanovs.
On the reconstruction of the Fomenko-Nosovsky so-called. Razin's uprising was a major war between the southern Astrakhan kingdom and the Romanov-controlled parts of White Russia, the northern Volga and Veliky Novgorod. This hypothesis is also confirmed by Western European documents. IN AND. Buganov cites a very interesting document. It turns out that the uprising in Russia, led by Razin, caused a huge resonance in Western Europe. Foreign informants described the events in Russia as a struggle for power, for the throne. It is also interesting that Razin's revolt was called the Tatar revolt.
The end of the war and the execution of Razin
In November 1671, Astrakhan was captured by the Romanov troops. This date is considered the end of the war. However, the circumstances of the defeat of the Astrakhan people are practically unknown. It is believed that Razin was captured and executed in Moscow as a result of betrayal. But even in the capital, the Romanovs did not feel safe.
Jacob Reitenfels, an eyewitness to Razin's execution, reports:
In order to forestall the disturbances that the king feared, the square on which the criminal was punished was, by order of the king, surrounded by a triple row of devoted soldiers. And only foreigners were allowed into the middle of the enclosure. And at the crossroads throughout the city, troops were stationed.
The Romanovs made a lot of efforts to find and destroy the unwanted documents of the Razin side. The following fact speaks of how carefully they were searched. During interrogation, Frol (Razin's younger brother) testified that Razin had buried a jug with documents on the island of the Don River, in a tract, on a break under a willow tree. The Romanov troops shoveled the entire island, but found nothing. Frol was executed only a few years later, probably trying to get more accurate information about the documents from him.
Probably, documents about the Razin war were kept in both Kazan and Astrakhan archives, but, alas, these archives disappeared without a trace.